


Against All Hope

by arda_fata



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Harad, Haradrim - Freeform, Healing, In which Elrohir is really awesome, Mortal Wound, pelennor field
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:09:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2545367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arda_fata/pseuds/arda_fata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was just another enemy in their eyes, but it wasn't the case. He had made a promise to his loved ones about protecting the head of their family and Zaki would do whatever it took to keep his father alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against All Hope

**Author's Note:**

> If Anyone could help me make the titles or lastnames more accurate I'd be forever grateful
> 
> also, the text in italics is spoken in the language of the Haradrim... supposedly.

The wounded were everywhere, the dead as well. And some few surviving men, either Easterlings or Haradrim were too trying to get their wounded to safety.

 

Three times had Zaki been overlooked as he tried to find help for his father.

 

None of these men would help them… not even Prince Imrahil’s. Not even when their father had respected the pact by which Khalil had ordered his men to fight for the Gondorians.

 

At the sight of the city, their men, at a sign of Prince Khalil, had turned against their own countrymen to aid Gondor. They too had suffered to defend this city at the call of Prince Imrahil, why wouldn’t their wounded be tended as well?

 

Because they looked like their enemies.

 

And they believed themselves superior.

 

Was one man’s life worthier than another’s because of the race he belonged to?

 

They were helping their other allies; the men of the north and the horse lords helped each other. Why would nobody help their people? They too had fought on their side.

 

His father, too, had been wounded on their line; he, too, was a great general.

 

And all the other men around them, too, were fathers and husbands and sons. Brothers. Someone waited for them away at home. Where was Makin? Dead? Prisoner? Whose prisoner? What would he tell his sister?

 

Zaki raged as he lifted his head, refusing to leave his father’s side.

 

“Help!” he yelled, but only two or three people turned their eyes to them before returning to their own.

 

He then saw them.

 

Tall, graceful, beyond beautiful.

 

Zaki al-Kouri was shocked to actually see creatures like these roaming through the battlefield. To actually see them and see they truly existed, that they were not myths and children’s stories.

 

Maybe they would help? Maybe these creatures would listen to him? Maybe they were even able to save his father’s life? He hoped they would. They were of another kind, also.

 

They might be his father’s only hope. His mother and sisters depended on him to keep Khalil alive. His mother’s life was on the line, she would die with their father…

 

“ _Wait for me…_ ” he told the old man clutching his hand before getting himself loose and launching on a desperate race towards the elves.

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

It was the scream that alerted Elladan of the Haradrim running at full speed towards him. He raised his sword to defend himself as his brother sprang to his side when the man fell to his knees in front of them in cloud of dust.

 

Wide expressive brown eyes turned up to look at them, begging.

 

Whatever this man wanted with them, it was not a fight.

 

He took out his sword and stuck it on the grown before them and lifting his hands open, palms up, to them. A surrender.

 

“Father!” he gasped, “Old! Wounded! ”

 

He pointed behind them, desperate. “There! Help!”

 

They turned to look at each other before giving the man a suspicious look.

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

Zaki took a deep breath and tried to control his frustration. He didn’t know much of the speech of the men of the north, only a handful of words. Maybe the elves didn’t spoke that language either? In that case, he was doomed.

 

“Imrahil, ally!” maybe the name would ring a bell?

 

“Please!” he urged them. “Father wounded! Help! Dying!”

 

A curt nod from one of them had Zaki back up on his feet and guiding them back to the spot where he had left his father, almost jumping in his urgency to get there.

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

An ally of the Prince of Dol Amroth?

 

That was completely unexpected.

 

The man, more of a boy now that they saw him, guided them to an old man, dressed for war, in the garb of a royal captain. The man was almost unconscious, but clung to his son’s hand with a groan as the boy returned to his side.

 

“Khalil al-Kouri” he told them pointing to the man. “My father.”

 

There was a long gash across the man’s abdomen. His chances of survival were few, his age and his wound played against him.

 

“Please!” the boy told them, placing his hand over his father’s.

 

Elrohir looked intently at him for a few seconds before calling for help to bring the father into the houses of healing.

 

Between a Gondorian soldier, the elves, and the boy they took the man all the way to Minas Tirith. Khalil clutched his son’s hand all the way as if clinging to life through him.

 

He didn’t seem to be a day above sixteen, and something in his big brown eyes, begging for his father’s life had reminded him of another boy. This one with shiny gray eyes, just as large, a few years younger, begging them to tell him it had been a mistake. That they would find his father, and his brothers as well, that they were not dead, that his father and elder brothers were still coming to get him and his mother and that all would be fine.

 

But that boy had grown up and died millennia ago.

 

The Haradrim boy kept talking to his father softly, in his heavily accented voice, with false merriment in it. Not with hope, but maybe a desire to hope?

 

_Everything will be fine now father, you will live. And you will see mother again! Don’t you want to do that? Mother will be so pleased to see you come home. And Aara will be so happy! She loves you much, but you already know that! And Fatima will rejoice to have you home, she is carrying a baby. You remember Fatima’s baby, don’t you? He will be your grandson. The first of many to come. From me and Aara as well. Would you not live to see your youngest daughter be married and have children of her own? And who will speak to the father of my bride if not you? Can you imagine it? All of your grandchildren playing in the fountain in the garden, like we used to do. With little ships and rose petals, and wood fishes for us to fish? We were always happy! We will only be happy again if you come home. And Mother! Don’t you wish to see your wife again? Do you remember how Uncle used to say you were such a fortunate man to have such a beautiful wife? Mother is a very beautiful woman. She is waiting; you once told me it was not becoming of a man to leave a woman waiting. Do you remember her eyes? Her eyes are black, and shiny, and you used to say the stars had been trapped in her eyes and that was why you had fallen love with her. And Fatima’s and Aara’s eyes are like hers. Your daughters too are beautiful. Who is going to help Makin and me scare off all the fools after them if not you?_

He seemed completely oblivious to the fact that both, Elladan and Elrohir, could understand him. They had learned the tongue of the south centuries ago, and Estel had learned it through his travels. Elrond would often roll his eyes whenever he heard his twin sons bickering with his ward in that foreign tongue, all in good spirits more often than not.

 

The boy was obviously trying to draw his father’s mind away from the pain. All of them, including him, knew he was most likely failing, but no one said anything and respected the effort he was making.

 

They settled the man in a cot and Elrohir began to work on his wound.

 

His brother and the other men had gone straight out to continue their work of bringing in the wounded and treating them.

 

The young man kept watch by his father’s side jealously, rarely ever lifting his eyes from the man’s face, still taking about their home and their family and all kinds of banal things of their everyday lives. His mother’s singing, the flowers of the garden, his sisters’ cookery, toys they had had, his elder sister’s wedding to a man named Makin, his younger sister who was little more than a child, the dogs running around, the beautiful strong horses on the stable, the mosaics and tiled murals on the walls and ceiling. Rose petals, incense, and a lullaby somewhere in the house.

 

The same type of gibberish his brother had told their mother to keep her conscious after…

 

Sometimes the boy’s eyes would turn to him, analyzing his face and his hands as he worked to clean and suture the man’s wound. Not accusing, not frightened, but shocked, as if he could barely believe Elrohir was there and actually helping them.

 

It was not as deep as it had seemed at first. It had not damaged any internal organs, only the muscle, and that was something this brat could thank the Valar on his knees for. But it could kill him if the hemorrhage was not contained.

 

The elf lifted his eyes from his work as he felt the boy’s intense gaze upon him once more.

 

“Zaki” he told him, pointing to his own heart. “Zaki”

 

“Elrohir.” He answered with a nod.

 

“Elrohir” Zaki repeated, memorizing his name.  “Khalil” he then pointed to the man.

 

“Your father’s name is Khalil, you are Zaki.” The elf nodded as he finished stitching the man’s belly. He then asked Zaki to lift his father up to bandage him.

 

They were done and laying him back down when two yells called their attention.

 

“Zaki! Khalil!”

 

“ _You are here! I have been looking for you two._ ”

 

It was Imrahil’s youngest son, accompanied by another man, five or six years older than Zaki and a Haradrim, too.

 

“Makin!” the relief in Zaki’s voice was palpable through the air.

 

“ _You are not wounded, are you? And your father? Fatima will kill me if I don’t bring both of you back!_ ” other man asked as he embraced Zaki. Amrothos took a step back and turned to Elrohir to give them privacy.

 

 _“Father is wounded, but he is being helped. This man, he is an elf, he has wondrous hands for healing. He was a blessing to find, godsend, I swear. Makin, I was so worried about you, I thought I would not only lose my mother and father, but my sister and you as well.”_ Zaki babbled as sobs wracked through his body, finally breaking down in his brother in law’s arms.

 

Elrohir stood up, once he made certain Khalil was asleep, and walked to them. _“he is asleep for now. If he wakes up, give him something for the pain. I will have someone sent a concoction up. If he lives through the night, then the worse is over”_

 

Makin nodded and Zaki stared in shock at the elf as he turned to speak to Amrothos.

 

“You have just saved one of my father’s greatest allies. And you have gained some loyal friends as well. Soussi al-Kebir is an honorable man, as are his sons and brother, they will not forget this, at least for five generations, by then you’ll be revered among them.” The young man told him as they walked away.

 

“How come he is your father’s ally?” the elf asked, wanting to hear that story.

 

“There has always been a history of trading between Dol Amroth and certain great families of the Haradrim. The Al-Kouri family, one of them, has lands which are rich and almost on the border with Umbar. They share our hatred for the corsairs, and we have often defended one another’s ships. They have worshiped the Valar since the times of Númenor, and they have often proven allies to Gondor. All in the utmost discretion, of course, things are delicate between their chieftains. They rarely unite unless it is against a great enemy.” Amrothos took a deep breath and turned to look back at the stairs that led to the place where they had left the boy and his father. “They are powerful, so much that the head of their family has always been called Soussi al-Kebir.”

 

“The Chief of the Desert”

 

“Yes. Last year, when the chiefs began to prepare for war, they did too. But Khalil had my father informed, and told him they would march with the others to keep him alert. They have come to our side once more. This time openly and they might pay a heavy price for it. Zaki is fifteen; he shouldn’t be in the middle of a war.”

 

“No one should be in the middle of a war.” Elrohir reasoned and Amrothos nodded.

 

“Makin, the husband of his elder sister, was speaking to my father just a while ago. There have been orders to bring in all the men who bear the arms of the Al-Kouri. The rest of the wounded will be set elsewhere in the city, but our own and our allies are priority.” The man informed him.

 

“And Aragorn? What has he said about this arrangement?” the elf asked.

 

“I do not know, I’m not even certain he has been told. We weren’t even expecting him to appear.” Amrothos answered and the both shared a curt nod before taking different paths. They both had many duties at that very moment.


End file.
